Talk:Rockbox

Rework to capabilities sections

When I first expanded this article, the only usable software-codec target was the H1xx, so naturally all the stuff about supported codecs, etc went into that section. Now, however, there are lots of software-codec targets including the H1xx, H3xx, all the iPod models and the upcoming iAudio and iFP ports.

Therefore I think it'd be better to rework the article into at least two main sections, one on the hardware-codec Archos targets and one on software codec support (maybe one on the plugins too, since they are mostly cross-platform). After that we can have lists of supported devices and upcoming ports. I'll try and get to work on this over the next few days, barring any objections. --Bk0 (Talk) 17:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. --Bk0 (Talk) 16:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed section about H300 patchset

Since Rockbox is such a dynamic, fast moving project, I'm trying to avoid putting anything in the article that will go out of date quickly. This includes detailed progress reports on each port in development, as well as listing every minute feature that gets added or changed from day to day. In that spirit I've removed the recently added section on the H300 "optimized" patchset. I expect most of what it contains to eventually get merged into mainline, so there's not really a need to create a separate section now. Perhaps a sentence or two about it in the "Software decoding devices" section would be warranted. --Bk0 (Talk) 16:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

iriver - the name of the company

This Korean company is currently (April 2006) spelling its name as 'iriver' (with all lowercase letters) while they used to (conversion date unkown to this author) spell it 'iRiver' previously. The latter version is also printed on most of the actual physical music players people own and use "out there".

New format for notes

Hullo, I edited the article to use the new markup for notes. It numbers notes automagically, which is good, but it can get troublesome if a lot of unlabled external links are used, which is not so good. I went ahead anyway because no external links were unlabled when I last saw it. --KJ 11:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Support on iPod 6G

It can run on iPod 6G with emCore. Should add iPod 6G to supported devices list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theunamedguy (talk • contribs) 17:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

On Portal:Free software, Rockbox is currently the featured article

Just to let you know. The purpose of featuring an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain the feature for a week or so. The previous feature was gPhoto. Gronky 19:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Better screenshots

Is it possible to get a screenshot of one of the more photogenic WPSs? For example, iPod Green5g, Arctic Desert, or Black Glass. The ones currently in the article look really cheap and DIY. It falsely gives the impression that Rockbox cannot be nice and polished. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kai Miller (talk • contribs) .

I think the ipodVision theme is quite nice. As for being 'cheap' and 'DIY', that's all in the beholder. Please feel free to submit screenshots that you feel are more aesthetically pleasing. --Bk0 (Talk) 15:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Green5g and Black Glass are probably not ideal, because they rely on patches, and would give a false impression of what the official build can do. Anything which involves background or other images raises copyright issues, which would need to be cleared up. The aardvark skins for the ipod are similar to black glass, unpatched, and rather lovely, but it would be nice to use one which is not ipod-specific - two ipod themes is unbalanced. Arctic Desert would be good, but the original version is by Itay Lazarovitch, and I don't know how to get in touch with him to ask about copyright. Henry^Flower 16:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Features

Doesn't specify if it is capable to record voice thru the mic. Towsonu2003 01:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

What is this?

"Rockbox's creators currently disadvise attempting to install Rockbox to people unfamiliar with working in command prompts, since an installation with manually entered commands is currently the only way to do so."

What's this? I didn't have to use any command line to get the firmware running. 194.29.193.239 23:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Correct. I just removed that statement from the article. --Bk0 (Talk) 01:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

It probably used to be the case. I remember having to do some command line stuff when I installed the rockbox firmware ages ago, but it seems to have changed a bit since. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 01:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Really discuss the source layout in WP?

As the title says, should the source code layout really get laid our here? I don't think so, WP should be an encyclopedia, and not document the project. That section would fit way better in the Rockbox wiki (how much Rockbox devs / interested users read this page here?). Additionally, I think discussing new ports here in detail doesn't make sense. IMO it would be better to simply name them and link to the corresponding thread in the Rockbox forums.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.13.186.1 (talk • contribs).

After thinking about it I agree, the source layout section is probably better put in the Developers section of the rockbox.org wiki. This article is getting lengthy so trimming it out will help with flow. The new ports section is useful but shouldn't contain easily outdated progress information. I've tried to remove very specific things like "LCD driver is functional but audio doesn't work yet" in order to keep it general ("Port is suitable for developers only"). --Bk0 (Talk) 14:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup

I disagree with the cleanup tag recently added to the article. The embedded lists are both sourced and encyclopedic as they are necessary to describe the Rockbox feature set. I may agree that the footnotes could use trimming, however much of that clutter is due to the hwcodec/swcodec distinction that must be made when describing what Rockbox can/cannot do. --Bk0 (Talk) 18:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Articles shouldn't consist of groups of bullet points unless explicitly required by the source material. As stated in the template, the information currently given in this article's numerous lists should be moved into sections of prose which discuss it. The features section in particular is egrecious; this isn't a catalogue, and lists of supported codecs are of limited notability anyway. it's not that difficult to turn lists into prose. Chris Cunningham 19:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with verbosity solely for its own sake. Can you reference your claim that it is a Wikipedia requirement? Regarding the list of codecs, extensive codec support is one of Rockbox's most noteable features over competing proprietary firmwares. --Bk0 (Talk) 00:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

The existence of the list to prose template will do for starters. I'm really not sure how to sell this to you if you don't already see that the article's current format (a series of bullet-points instead of an actual article) is stylistically poor. Anyway, I usually try to work on things I've tagged myself at some point. Chris Cunningham 08:30, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, changing bullet lists to prose is part of the general WP religion. Which does not mean it is always a good thing. The lists I see in the article now are good. If they are changed into prose, the article will be harder to read for useful information. Making information denser on the page does not make it easier to digest. It's not like we need to worry about wasting paper due to whitespace. -69.87.200.77 14:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Removing the lists would be stupid, the article is fine as-is.71.112.165.147 20:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Much of the bare lists have been reworked into prose (or prose plus lists), so I'll remove the cleanup template barring any objections. --Bk0 (Talk) 23:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

opensource hardware

Are there any DIY opensource hardware projects that are Rockbox compatible? What resources and tips would be most useful for such projects? -69.87.200.77 18:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

There are none.152.3.154.52 19:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

iPod classic

Regarding the changes made recently by User:Bk0, although Apple might officially introduced the "classic" suffix only recently, I see that both iPod and iPod classic articles treat "iPod classic" as a series of 6 generations of iPods. Here is the first paragraph of iPod classic article:

The iPod classic is Apple's flagship line of iPod MP3 players. To date, there have been six generations of the iPod classic, as well as a spin-off (the iPod photo) that was later re-integrated into the main classic line. All generations use a 1.8" hard drive for storage. The "classic" retronym was introduced with the introduction of the sixth-generation iPod classic on September 5, 2007; prior to this, iPod classics were referred to as "iPod".

So I think, that in order to prevent misunderstanding by the reader we can write "iPod classic series" and also make the proper link to the article, like this:

• iPod classic series:
  • iPod 1^st generation
  • iPod 2^nd generation
  • iPod 3^rd generation
  • iPod 4^th generation (Grayscale)
  • iPod 4^th generation (Color/Photo)
  • iPod 5^th and 5.5^th generation (Video)
• iPod nano 1^st generation
• iPod mini series:
  • iPod mini 1^st generation
  • iPod mini 2^nd generation

ilia 13:30, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how the changed layout improves layout or readability. If you can find other references (outside of Wikipedia) that call it "iPod classic series" (presumably as opposed to 'iPod Touch series'?) such that it is apparent that this is general consensus, my opinion may be changed. Otherwise I think the article is better suited with a single level list with the iPod generations 1 - 5.5. --Bk0 (Talk) 23:44, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the fifth generation classic line was known as the iPod Video, because it was the only thing capable of playing any video.--Rsrikanth05 (talk) 11:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

new image

Here is a new rockbox cover image:

http://www.duke.edu/~mgg6/pics/rbimage.png

It is under CC license, and the album art is of a defiance, ohio album that is also under CC license, so it should be completely free. Could someone upload it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.3.198.221 (talk) 23:31, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I've created another one, which should have clearer licensing: http://rasher.dk/rockbox/rockbox-gigabeatf-cabbiev2.png . The "album art" is a crop of this picture, which is CC-BY: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulobrandao/2762313433/ . I'm not allowed to upload images, so if someone could do it and add this one to the infobox, that would be great. Rasher (talk) 15:08, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Primary Sources?

In an article such as this (technical description of a project) what purpose to non-primary sources serve? Specifically, why would they be considered "more" dependable in terms of being able to describe what the project is, does, is intended for, supports, etc than primary sources? I understand, in terms of subjective issues, that a primary source can't be a valid source. But for an article primarily on "What Rockbox is and does" isn't the best source the people who write it, rather than people who read about it and (regularly) misunderstand such things?

Or is this a suggestion that the article needs more subjective content, such as the worth of Rockbox or its impact on the open-source and digital-audio community? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.158.46.113 (talk) 18:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the citations thing is stupid. Its an open source project. Citing other people talking about the source is hardly a better solution then just linking to the source directly. Can we get it removed? 152.3.198.221 (talk) 03:15, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I removed the primary sources header as it appears the article's citations are compliant with the policy linked here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources

Since the article is now nearly free of interpretive statements and instead merely declares what the software can do, and when features were added, linking primary sources is both appropriate and desirable. However, more sources (including secondary sources) are still needed. But this is covered by the citations needed header. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.3.194.46 (talk) 00:07, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Rockbox kernel: μClinux / Linux kernel

Did the Rockbox project write its own operating system from scratch? Because in case they use some more or less modified version of μClinux or Linux kernel, it would be, you know, nice to accredit that. User:ScotXW^t@lk 17:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

• This is a very good question. RockBox' website doesn't seem to address it. LADave (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2015 (UTC)